“I
sometimes say that in my last life maybe I was Chinese.”—Sen.Dianne
Feinstein

As
media, intelligence agency, and political scrutiny of foreign
meddling is seemingly at its apex, a story with big national
security implications involving a high-ranking senator with access
to America’s most sensitive intelligence information has been
hiding in plain sight.

The
story involves China and the senior U.S. senator from California,
and former chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,
Democrat Dianne Feinstein. It was buried eight paragraphs into a
recentPoliticoexposéon
foreign efforts to infiltrate Silicon Valley, as a passing example
of political espionage:

Former
intelligence officials…[said] Chinese intelligence once
recruited a staff member at a California office of U.S. Senator
Dianne Feinstein, and the source reported back to China about
local politics. (A spokesperson for Feinstein said the office
doesn’t comment on personnel matters or investigations, but
noted that no Feinstein staffer in California has ever had a
security clearance.)

Later
comes additional detail:

According
to four former intelligence officials, in the 2000s, a staffer
in Senator Dianne Feinstein’s San Francisco field office was
reporting back to the MSS [China’s
Ministry of State Security, its intelligence and security
apparatus]. While this person, who was a liaison to the local
Chinese community, was fired, charges were never filed against
him. (One former official reasoned this was because the staffer
was providing political intelligence and not classified
information—making prosecution far more difficult.) The
suspected informant was ‘run’ by officials based at China’s San
Francisco Consulate, said another former intelligence official.
The spy’s handler ‘probably got an award back in China’ for his
work, noted this former official, dryly.

This
anecdote provides significantly more questions than answers. For
starters: Who was the spy? For how long was the spy under
surveillance? What information about “local politics” was the spy
passing back to China? Just how close was the spy to the senator?
Did law enforcement officials sweep vehicles and other areas for
listening devices? Was there an investigation into whether others
in the senator’s circle may have been coordinating with Beijing?

Did
the senator expose herself to potential blackmail, or the public
to danger through leakage of sensitive, highly classified
information? Is firing really the proper punishment for providing
political intelligence to a foreign power?

The
Details Right Now Are Few and Blurry

We
now know only the most basic of additional details about what
occurred in Feinstein’s office. Five years ago, the FBI approached
the senator to apprise her that a San Francisco-based staffer was
being investigated under suspicion of spying for China. According
to theSan
Francisco Chronicle, Feinstein’s hometown paper, this
staffer, who had worked with Feinstein for almost 20 years, drove
her around in San Francisco and “served as gofer in her San
Francisco office and as a liaison to the Asian American community,
even attending Chinese Consulate functions for the senator.”

An
unnamed source added that a Chinese MSS official first approached
the staffer during a visit to Asia several years prior. Given his
proximity to Feinstein, we have no idea what information he could
have gleaned in her employ. We do have a presumed identity.The
Daily Callerdiscovered that a Feinstein
staffer named Russell Lowe, listed on the senator’s payroll as an
“office director” as of 2013 before he was let go, matches the
description of the Chinese asset.

It
appears Lowe continues to operate freely in the United States. A
year after he was removed from Feinstein’s staff, Lowe spoke at a
conference on Chinese investment in California. In October 2017 he
visited a South Korean publication’s office with former Rep. Mike
Honda (D-CA), indicating he still had access to political figures.

Lowe
presently serves as secretary general of theEducation
for Social Justice Foundation, which seeks to “educate the
public on unresolved historical conflicts, human rights, and
crimes against humanity.”The
Chinese governmentlikely views its
present focus favorably: Japanese abuses during the World War II
era via its “comfort women” system whereby 200,000 girls from 13
or more Asian countries were forced into sexual slavery. Lowe
discusses the nonprofit’s workhere.

It
took a tweet from President Trump implying hypocrisy, given
Feinstein’s role investigating “Russian collusion” as a member of
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, while a Chinese spy
had infiltrated her own office, to force the senator to address
the issue.

(1/2) The FBI told me 5 years ago it had concerns that China was seeking to recruit an administrative member of my Calif staff (despite no access to sensitive information). I took those concerns seriously, learned the facts and made sure the employee left my office immediately.

Feinstein’s
account conflicts with what has been reported regarding the
recruitment and activities of the Chinese spy. She conveniently
omits that her office employed this individual for almost 20 years
in a close capacity, while he represented the senator in
interactions with Chinese officials.

A
Short History of Dianne Feinstein’s Love for China

For
the last 40 years, no politician in America has arguably
maintained a deeper, more longstanding and friendlier relationship
with China, at the highest levels of its ruling Communist Party,
than Feinstein. It dates back to the opening of U.S.-Chinese
diplomatic relations in 1979.

Shortly
thereafter, Feinstein, then mayor of San Francisco,established
a “sister city” relationship with Shanghai, one of the
earliest and most robust such relationships in U.S.-China history.
Soon after, Feinstein led a mayoral delegation to China joined by
her husband, investor Richard Blum, a trip they took together many
times over the ensuing years as the relationship between both
Feinsteins and China grew.

During
the 1980s, as mayor of San Francisco, Feinstein developed a close
friendship with Shanghai Mayor Jiang Zemin. This substantially
enhanced Feinstein’s foreign policy profile, and created an
important linkage to the U.S. government for China’s Communist
Party (CCP).

Just
as Feinstein rose to a prominent position in foreign affairs and
national security in the U.S. Senate, first on the Foreign
Relations Committee and later as chairman of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, Jiang rose to the top of Chinese
leadership, serving as chairman of the Central Military
Commission, general secretary of the CCP, and president of the
People’s Republic of China (PRC). Under Jiang’s leadership, the
PRC initiated abrutal
crackdown against practitioners of Falun Gong, including
mass imprisonments, beatings, torture, rape, organ harvesting, and
murder, and engaging in allegedhuman
rights atrocities against Tibetans. Feinstein never
renounced her friendship with Jiang, in spite of these acts.

It
Turned Out to Be a Lucrative Relationship

In
1986, Feinstein and Jiang designated several corporate entities
for fostering commercial relations, one named Shanghai Pacific
Partners. Feinstein’s husband served as a director. His financial
position was relatively small, less than $500,000 on one project,
the only such position in China the Feinstein family held when
Feinstein entered the Senate in 1992.

‘They
said that Feinstein’s consistent support for China’s interests
cannot help but benefit her husband’s efforts to earn profits
there.’

That
project, however, which Blum’s firm participated in alongside PRC
state-run Shanghai Investment Trust Corp., was one of the first
joint ventures between San Francisco and Chinese investors,reportedly“cited
by Chinese officials as a testament to the friendly business ties
between Shanghai and San Francisco that Feinstein had initiated.”
Subsequently Blum’s investments in the Middle Kingdom mushroomed.

In
May 1993, Feinsteinexpressed
her strong supporton the Senate floor for
continued trading with China. Contemporaneously, her husband was
seeking to raise up to $150 million from investors, including
himself, for a variety of Chinese enterprises.

In
August 1993, Feinstein and her husband visited Beijing for
extensive meetings with Chinese leaders at President Jiang’s
invitation. As theLos
Angeles Timesreported in a 1994
exposé on Feinstein’s husband’s business ties and the potential
conflict of interests they presented: “Such encounters are fondly
remembered when deals are clinched back in China, according to
American experts in Chinese business practices. They said that
Feinstein’s consistent support for China’s interests cannot help
but benefit her husband’s efforts to earn profits there.”

The
historical record suggests these American experts were right. Blum
successfully raised $160 million for the aforementioned Asia fund
under his Newbridge Capital investment company, including
investing $1-2 million himself. The fund invested in several
state-owned and Chinese government-linked businesses.

Why,
We Love Trading with China

Blum’s
firm’s largest holding—at the time hisChina
investments began to draw scrutinyin
1997—was its stake in Northwest Airlines. The then-estimated $300
million position was poised to significantly appreciate in value,
as Northwest happened to be the sole airline operator providing
nonstop service from the United States to any city in China.

On
one such visit in January 1996, Feinstein and Blum enjoyed a meal
with President Jiang.

When
questioned on his China investments, Blum pledged to donate future
profits from the holdings to his nonprofit foundation to help
Tibetan refugees, thereby “remov[ing] any perception that I, in
any way, shape or form benefit from or influence my wife’s
position on China as a U.S. senator.” But these conflict of
interest issues persisted.

In
January 1995, Feinstein was appointed to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. Subsequently, she made several visits to
China, accompanied by her husband, where she met with senior
government officials.

During
these trips it the couple was wined and dined. On one such visit
in January 1996, Feinstein and Blum enjoyed a meal with President
Jiang in Zhongnanhai, the exclusive leadership compound for
China’s Communist Party, where according to Feinstein they ate in
Mao Zedong’s residence in the room where he died.

Feinstein
kept up her dogged support for increased trade with China. In May
1996, she penned an editorial in theLos
Angeles Timescalling for the
United States to grant most-favored-nation trading status to China
“on a permanent basis and get past the annual dance that is
proving to be extraordinarily divisive and not at all helpful
toward reaching the oft-stated goal: improvement in human rights.”

Campaign
Contributions from Foreign Sources

While
Feinstein maintained her pro-China positions, in March 1997, the
senatorrevealedthat
the FBI had warned her the Chinese government might seek to funnel
illegal contributions to her campaign fund. She was one of only
six members of Congress to receive such a warning. As theNew
York Timesnoted at the time, Feinstein
had returned $12,000 in 1994 contributions from people with
connections to Lippo Bank, an arm of a multi-billion dollar
conglomerate owned by the Riady family, with investments and
operations throughout Asia. It employed a senior American
executive named John Huang.

At
the time Feinstein disclosed returning the Lippo-tied
contributions, Huang was under Justice Department investigation.

The
Riadys had been friends and supporters of the Clintons since Bill
Clinton was governor of Arkansas. Clinton named Huang, a top
fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), his deputy
assistant secretary of commerce.

It
was later revealed that Huang may have had a direct financial
relationship with the Chinese government. The DNC returned more
than half of the $3 million he had collected for the party. In
1998,an
unclassified reportfrom the Senate
Committee on Governmental Affairs stated that the Riadys—Huang’s
former employer, the leader of whichhad
also pled guilty to campaign finance violations—“had a
long-term relationship with a Chinese intelligence agency.”

What
is the connection to Feinstein? In June 1996, the senator held a
fundraiser at her home attended by President Clinton, Huang, and
Xiaoming Dia, chairman of a Hong Kong-based investment company in
which Lippo Group had owned a controlling stake until 1994.

The
Chinese Get Feinstein’s Lucrative Political Support

In
May 2000, Feinstein lobbied for making permanent normal trading
relations with China, a measure that ultimately passed, and helped
pave the way for its entrance into the World Trade Organization,
which Feinstein also supported. At the time, a spokesperson for
Feinstein indicated that her husband had divested of his last
holdings in mainland China in 1999. But Blum’s stake in another
Newbridge Capital Asia fund, which contained investments in China,
belied that assertion.

Meanwhile,
in the years leading to the passage of that legislation, Blum’s
Newbridge Capitalreportedly
investedmore than $400 million into East
Asian businesses, at least $90 million of which was “invested in
companies whose profits are pegged to the burgeoning mainland
China market, according to the companies themselves,” and several
of which were partly owned or founded by the Chinese government.
If nothing else, Blum still stood to profit handsomely from
management fees for these portfolios.

Defense
companies in which Blum’s firms were invested signed billions of
dollars in military contracts approved by Feinstein’s committee.

This
suggests a parallel pattern in the Feinstein family’s political
and business dealings that adversaries like China surely could
have sought to exploit. When pressed on conflicts of interest,
however, onmultipleoccasionsFeinstein
has flippantly responded by rhetorically asking what she could do
to satisfy those raising the issue, short of getting divorced.

Feinstein’s
husband has stressed that histies
to the Dalai Lamaand criticism of Chinese
human rights violations would never have helped him curry favor
with the Chinese, and maintained no conflict of interest between
his wife’s position and his investments.

The
senator recently co-sponsored the Foreign Investment Risk Review
Modernization Act of 2018 (FIRRMA),incorporated
into the pending National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA),
which gives the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United
States greater oversight over foreign transactions, geared in part
towards China’s malign efforts to gain valuable technology and
steal intellectual property. But provisions penalizingsanctions-violatingChinese
telecommunications company ZTE were stripped from the NDAA at the
Trump administration’s urging.

Feinstein’s
Related Apologism for the Chinese Government

Feinstein’s
economic positions frequently downplayed the PRC’s rampant human
rights violations. The senator has fashioned herself a peacemaker,
often urging appeasement of the Chinese regime in both apologism
for such abuses and urging restraint.

These
efforts date back to the early 1980s. Until that time,
participants in San Francisco’s Chinese New Year Parade displayed
the flag of the Nationalist Chinese government, which had ruled in
exile on Taiwan after 1949. According toSan
Francisco Gate, then-mayor Feinstein “asked
organizers to stop the partisan practice because she wanted to
encourage trade with China.”

Feinstein
alsoargued
against tying China’s most-favored-nation trading status to
human rights improvements. In an argument that reads as not
only beyond naïve, but demonstrates an offensive moral
equivalency, Feinstein added: “Chinese society continues to open
up with looser ideological controls, freer access to outside
sources of information and increased media reporting.More
people in China vote for their leadership on the local level
than do Americans.Economic
liberalization is introducing market forces into the economy.
Educational levels are up, along with wages and the standard of
living” (emphasis mine).

In
March 1996,Feinstein
sought to ease tensions between China and Taiwan, arranging
discussions with high-level Chinese dignitaries on Capitol Hill,at
China’s behest. During this period, Feinstein took an
uncharacteristically aggressive stance towards China’s hostile
actions, conducting missile tests near Taiwan, presumably in line
with the Clinton administration: “We view the missile exercises…as
provocative and unnecessary.”

She
took an arguably harsher line towards then-Taiwanese President Lee
Teng-Hui, stating: “What is really necessary is for [the leaders
of] Taiwan to make a statement in word and in deed that they will
adhere to a one-China policy.”

In
a June 2010 interview with theWall
Street Journalcovering a trip to
China in which she met with old pals Jiang and former premier Zhu
Rongji, Feinstein seemed to further downplay and even alibi the
Tiananmen Square massacre:

I
think that was a great setback for China in the view of the
world. And I think China has also – as we would – learned
lessons from it.

It
just so happens I was here after that and talked to Jiang Zemin
and learned that at the time China had no local police. It was
just the PLA [People’s Liberation Army]. And no local police
that had crowd control. So, hence the tanks.

Clearly
none of that made good sense. But that’s the past. One learns
from the past. You don’t repeat it. I think China has learned a
lesson.

Similarly,
in late 2015, Feinstein effectively sought to defend the CCP from
criticism, on a purportedly pragmatic basis, infighting
legislationfrom Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) that
would have named the street running in front of the Chinese
Embassy in Washington DC “Liu Xiaobo Plaza.” Xiaobo, a Nobel
Prize-winning anti-Communist writer and human rights activist, had
at the time been held in jail for seven years by the Chinese
government for criticizing the regime.

When
Cruzsought
unanimous consentfor the bill on the
occasion of President Xi Jinping’s U.S. visit, Feinstein blocked
it. A month later, when Cruz reintroduced the measure, citing a
statement co-authored by Feinstein and her Democrat colleague Pat
Leahy calling for Xiaobo’s release, Feinsteinagain
blocked the legislation.

Finally,
in February 2016,the
bill cleared the Senatein a unanimous
voice vote, though it died in the House amid a veto threat from
the Obama administration. Later, Feinstein didco-sponsor
a resolutionhonoring Xiaobo’s
freedom-fighting efforts—shortly after his death, in state
custody, in July 2017.

This
Is About Much More than a Chinese Spy

Let
us review the facts here.

China
has for almost 40 years cultivated warm relations with
Feinstein.

Feinstein
has uniformly taken political positions supporting greater ties
with China while taking a relatively dovish and strictly
apologist line on its human rights atrocities.

Feinstein’s
husband has profited handsomely during Feinstein’s career from
the greatly expanded China trade she supported. It is of course
possible that the Feinstein family’s privileged position with
the Chinese regime improved his investment opportunities.

Feinstein
has served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S.
government, while serving on committees whose work would be of
keen interest to the PRC.

A
staffer of almost two decades in close proximity to Feinstein
was allegedly successfully recruited by China’s MSS and fed
China “political intelligence.”

Imagine
for a second how a motivated and empowered prosecutor would
operate in this situation if tasked with exploring “any links
and/or coordination” between the Chinese government, Feinstein,
and individuals associated with her office.

Few
American officials could have been as potentially exposed to the
PRC’s skilled intelligence service as Feinstein. Here we have not
only proof of a spy, but real evidence of consistently pro-Chinese
policy that at very best created the appearance of a financial
conflict of interest.

Feinstein’s
dealings with the Chinese must be investigated. But so too ought
the links between federal officials and all of our adversaries, be
it the Chinese and Russians, thePakistanisand
Iranians, or the Muslim Brotherhood and itsstate
supporters. Feinstein is only one politician. How many other
relationships with American politicians have the Chinese and our
other adversaries fostered? How many spies might they have
recruited?

We
need a top-to-bottom reform of our government’s vetting efforts,
and enhancement of our counterintelligence capabilities. Attempts
by foreign countries to infiltrate our political offices pose a
grave national security threat, as Feinstein’s record clearly
shows. With people like her on pertinent congressional committees,
however, how many foxes have been elected to guard the henhouse?
Representatives’ responses to reform measures will help us find
out.

Ben
Weingarten is a senior contributor at The Federalist and senior
fellow at the London Center for Policy Research. He is the founder
and CEO of ChangeUp Media, a media consulting and production company
dedicated to advancing conservative principles. You can find his
work at benweingarten.com, and follow him on Twitter @bhweingarten.